The amount of data traffic being sent over metropolitan area networks (MANs) is increasing at an exponential rate. This is due in part to the increasingly ubiquitous use of the Internet by consumers and businesses, as well as the increasingly bandwidth-intensive nature of the Internet applications that are being deployed. Today's installed MAN infrastructure is based on the Synchronous Optical NETwork (SONET), a layer-1 technology that was developed in the mid-1980s for the public telephone network and adopted by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a standard for fiber optic networks. “Layer-1” and “layer-2” as used in this document refer to the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) Reference Model. SONET has a self-healing capability in which one piece of optical fiber handles all data traffic and a second piece of optical fiber remains on standby. Should the working section fail, SONET has an automatic capability to detect the failure and transfer control to the standby section. SONET is a multiplexing technology, which means that it enforces a rigid time-division multiplexing telecom hierarchy. While this approach works well for voice traffic, it is unnecessarily expensive and inefficient for data traffic.
An alternative to using SONET as the provisioning platform for networking service is to use a bridged, layer-2 network like the Ethernet. Such networks can provide services to areas where fiber optic lines don't extend and generally provide better data capacity at a lower cost. A problem with bus and ring networks like the Ethernet is the possibility of a single point of failure causing the system to breakdown. A common solution is to design the network with redundant segments and loops so that there is more than one route to each node in a SONET-like approach. Redundancy and loops can, however, present another problem in which a broadcast packet or an unknown unicast packet results in a broadcast storm where each node receives and rebroadcasts the packet causing potentially severe network congestion.
One way known in the industry of preventing broadcast storms and other unwanted side effects of looping is to use the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) which has been standardized in the 802.1D specification by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE Std. 802.1D-1998, IEEE Standard for Information technology —Telecommunications and information exchange between systems—Local and metropolitan area networks—Common specifications). With STP, the bridges in the network dynamically calculate an optimum subset of the topology that is loop-free and allows a path to each node. Alternate paths are blocked and unblocked as necessary to keep the routes of communication open when a fault occurs. A significant problem with STP is that when a link breaks, it may take thirty or more seconds for a path around the problem to be calculated and traffic successfully rerouted. This level of performance is too slow for use in today's local area networks (LANs) and metropolitan area networks (MANs), for example, where the customer expects seamless connections, undetectable fault correction, and data security.